10 Tips to instantly make you more profitable

In this blog post, I am going to share 10 tips with you that will instantly make you a more profitable player, especially in tournaments. While most players think that playing a fundamentally sound strategy is the only thing that matters, through diligent study and common sense, you will find that the game extends far beyond the felt. I hope this blog post enlightens you to some of these concepts.

Prepare for uncomfortable temperatures

Most casinos keep the temperature quite cold. For this reason, you either need to dress for cold weather or make yourself somewhat accustomed to the cold. During the WSOP, where parts of the tournament venue are freezing, I constantly hear players complaining about how cold it is. They fail to realize that if they prepared ahead of time and brought a jacket, they would be fine. They could also simply order a hot beverage from the cocktail waitress.

I have recently taken this concept one step further. I have started taking freezing cold showers every morning and also long walks outside whenever it is cold. These practices have allowed me to build up immunity to the cold. Even in the coldest poker room, I feel perfectly fine in a t-shirt. That being said, if poker rooms start making the environment hot, I could be in trouble!

Look at your cards properly

If your opponents can see your hand, you are going to have a tough time winning. You must use two hands when looking at your cards. If you only use one, your hand is likely visible from some angle. Don’t think that a chip stack can block your neighbor’s view. You want to make a deep cave with your hands and lift up only the corners of your cards as far back in the cave as possible.

Here are a few images to help you know if you are looking at your cards correctly.

This is not correct:

This is not correct:

This IS correct.

Believe it or not, but I actually had an impossible time finding a picture online of someone holding their cards in an ideal manner! I decided to take this one myself but even then, it was tough to show a good angle because if your cards are concealed properly, the camera should have a tough time seeing the cards. If you are right handed, simply turn the cards 90 degrees before peeking at the corners. If your cards are clearly visible to you and you don’t have to bend over a bit to look at them, you probably aren’t looking at them correctly.

Arrive on time

While some well-known professionals make a point to show up a few hours late to every tournament, I think that if you are in good physical and mental shape, that you should show up on time. There is a ton of value in being able to play short-handed and deep-stacked versus amateur opponents. If you show up late, you miss out on these opportunities. If you start with 30,000 chips in $10,000 buy-in event and can increase your stack to 33,000 on average within the first two hours, which is not too uncommon for a strong player at a soft short-handed table, you have won 10% of a starting stack, which is $1,000 in equity. I am not rich enough to turn down $500 per hour, so I show up and play these levels. Of course, if you are bad at poker, you should not show up on time and instead register as late as possible so that you are effectively gambling, which is much better than you will do compared to playing deep-stacked against good players.

Let your opponents know that you cannot be messed with

Playing in a blatantly straightforward manner is almost always a mistake. There are many reasons for this that I have discussed in my books, but one of the main ones is that your aggressive opponents will assume that they can apply a lot of pressure on you and make you fold unless you have a strong holding. Assuming you want to slowly grind up your stack, the last thing you want to do is induce your aggressive opponents to play back at you, making it difficult for you to steal pots on a regular basis. If at all possible, you want to make your opponents play straightforward against you. In order to do this, you will occasionally have to get a bit out of line and let your opponents know that you are not someone they can pick on.

In a recent WPT event at the BestBet in Jacksonville, I had a fairly aggressive kid directly on my right who made it clear that he was trying to push everyone around. When he reraised me for the first time, I 4-bet, and he called. I continuation bet the flop, and he folded. A little while later, he 3-bet me again. I again 4-bet and he folded. After that, he didn’t mess with me for the remainder of the day. These aggressive actions also induced the rest of the players at the table to stay out of my way because in their minds, it was clear that I was someone who was not afraid to play a big pot. When my straightforward opponents finally showed aggression, I simply folded. I ended up getting seven walks throughout the day, where everyone simply folds around to me when I am in the big blind, whereas no one else got a single one. If players are afraid of you, they will play in a blatantly straightforward manner, allowing you to have your way with the table.

Realize that the “average stack size” is fairly irrelevant

People love irrelevant stats. Just watch ESPN for a few minutes to see what I mean. You will constantly hear the commentators spew irrelevant stats such as “Their quarterback has won 8 straight games in the first week of November.” In poker, there are also a bunch of irrelevant stats. Perhaps the one that amateurs pay the most attention to is the “average stack size”. You instead need to be concerned with the effective stack size at your table and how that should alter your strategy. If the average stack size is 100 big blinds and you have 50 big blinds, there is no need to panic or feel like you are in bad shape. If the average stack size is 10 big blinds and you have 15 big blinds, you should not feel as if you are in a great situation. My best advice is to simply ignore this stat.

I once played in a $1,500 WSOP event where a guy was clearly concerned with the average stack size. Eventually it became clear to me that whenever he turned around to look at the tournament clock, he was checking to see if he had more or less than average. When he had less than average, he would raise with almost any two cards, hoping to get back above average. Once I figured this out, I started reraising him with an overly wide range. He didn’t last too long.

Don’t be distracted

While live poker gives you the opportunity to take in a huge amount of information about your opponents, it also provides you with lots of down time where little is happening. This results in most players becoming bored. They then turn to various distractions, such as their phone, sports, books, talking to their peers, and many other activates to occupy their attention. While it probably isn’t too big of a deal to occupy your time when you are on a break or there is no hand in progress, if you are constantly engaged with activities besides poker, you will not focus well. If you do not focus well, you will miss loads of vital information that will help you adjust to your opponents’ specific tendencies, allowing you to win significantly more money. When playing poker, turn off the distractions and play poker.

Plan your bathroom breaks

If you are anything like me, playing poker when you have to go to the bathroom is not ideal. This should lead you to plan your consumption of food and drinks to line up with when you will have a break in a tournament. For example, I know that after drinking a liquid, I have to pee around an hour later. This means that if I get a break every two hours, I should not drink anything during the first hour. I should also make a point to order my drink around 45 minutes into the level, ensuring it arrives roughly an hour into the level.

I usually have to go to the bathroom around 30 minutes after dinner. This is a particularly interesting situation because if I finish eating at the end of a dinner break, I will have to use the bathroom 30 minutes into the level, meaning I will have to hold it for 90 minutes, assuming two hours between breaks. Since that is obviously not a good situation, I instead make a point to scarf down my food on dinner break such that I am finished eating with 30 minutes left in the break.

By figuring out your tendencies, you will be able to better prepare. Is this too much information for you?!?

Recognize that you don’t have to win every hand you enter

It is important to realize and accept that you will not win every hand you enter. This concept often gives tight players a problem. They assume that since they only enter a few pots, usually with the best hand, that they should win all of them. This leads to them to stick around with obviously beat hands way too long, such as with Q-Q on J-T-7-K or A-A on 8-7-6-3-4. When you are likely to beat, you should get out of the way. If you think you have to win every hand you play, you will almost certainly end up broke.

Do not pay off tight players

This perhaps goes without saying, but if someone only plays premium hands, you do not want to invest significant money without a hand that is better than their range. This means that if a super tight player raises, you should be folding hands that are easily dominated, such as A-J and K-Q. Assuming your stacks are deep, you can play drawing hands, such as 4-4 and 8s-7s, but if you have around 26 big blinds or less, even these should be folded.

I wrote a blog post about this topic in the past. You can check it out here:

Attack the blinds of the tight players

While you should rarely give a tight player action, when the tight players are in the blinds, you should be prone to stealing with an overly wide range, especially if the players between you and the tight blinds are not overly active. It is not uncommon to find spots where you should raise with almost any two cards from the button or cutoff. If you pay attention and actively look for these situations, you will be able to profit with a much wider range of hands than normal.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Did you find any of these concepts to be interesting? If so, let me know about it in the comment section below. If you found this blog post to be helpful, please share it with your friends on Twitter and Facebook. If you want more content about the aspects of poker that extend beyond the felt, I suggest you check out my book, Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 2. Thanks for reading!

15 Comments

Helpful as always Jonathan. I am mainly a cash player but I have been working on my tournament skill set. My biggest opportunity I feel is mental and physical prep for the event. I’m used to 6hr cash sessions but not 13hr tourneys. The last one I played, I used many of these tips to work up a 120k stack (20k was starting size) in 4 hours. But by hour 8 I felt my focus and stamina dropping as I didn’t sleep enough and didn’t plan my meals well enough (nor bathroom time). Next thing I know I’m out just short of the money. It was a valuable lesson…so I’m all ears to your tips! I’ll be picking up your tournament books soon, already have your cash fame book and just bought positive poker.

I just read your article, “Waking Up” in Card Player; timing is everything I guess. I have been thinking about a plan to improve my game and my health for some time now. It was about two years ago I first wondered if better health could improve my poker play and “one of these days I’m going to actually do something about it.” Your article hit me right between the eyes. I just had my annual physical that yielded among other things an A1c of 10.3. I’m now off the fence and setting goals to begin a new program Feb 1. I’ll begin a walking program will be eating better, studying poker again and goal setting every week. I’ll let you know if there are any big cashes down the road. If not, at least hopefully I’ll be able to keep those Diabetes symptoms at bay a few more years. Thanks for the kick in the butt.

I love tournzment poker and have been reading what you have put out here for free. Hopefully will get your books as well. I think you have pointed out things people don’t realize are important. My biggest flaw is probably letting aggressive players pushing me around…seems wh ed n I puxh bzck ghey always seem to have the nuts.

Poker is tough when playing against decent players because they are constantly applying small amounts of aggression, forcing their opponents to fold most of their marginal hands. This image allows them to only put lots of money in with premium hands, which is often better than the good, but not great, hands that amateur players are willing to go all-in with. Good luck!

Jonathan, this was awesome! Sometimes what might seem obvious turns out to be very informative for others. Some really good tips in here. The LAPC at Commerce are coming up. So I will apply these pretty soon.

The casinos keeping cold temperatures is a pet peeve of mine. Comfortable room temp for most people is 72-74 degrees and they tend to keep it at 66-68 degrees. In Las Vegas, with outdoor temps often over 100, it is a shock to the system to come inside from the heat into what feels like a refrigerator. I don’t think this makes any sense – it costs casinos extra for every extra degree they cool too. Is this some sort of holdover from a bygone era, or do they really think it keeps people around?

I loved your new small stakes cash game and small stakes tournament books. I entered a tournament after I read the small stakes tournament book twice and finished in 2nd of 860. Probably just a good run but I say it was learning from your book! Also, the past two months my live $1/$2 play went to from ~$15/hr to ~$23/hr and online .25/.50 (two tables at a time) went from ~$11/hr to ~$23/hr.

I’m glad I came across your site since I’m about to play a WPT event in Reno next week. I used to be an everyday player but I basically stopped playing about 5 yrs ago. I played a small local Sunday tournament last week and realized I was shaking every time I entered a pot. Talk about a fish!! So this article, along with some of your videos has helped out and I cant wait to smash some dreams!!